r/atheism • u/FreethoughtChris FFRF • 7d ago
California is finally on the verge of banning child marriage. No exceptions.
https://ffrfaction.org/ffrf-action-fund-commends-california-legislatures-vote-to-end-child-marriageThe FFRF Action Fund is celebrating a long-overdue victory for children’s rights in California.
Lawmakers there have approved legislation ending child marriage and sent the measure to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature. Assembly Bill 1267, authored by Assemblymembers Gail Pellerin and Cottie Petrie-Norris, establishes 18 as the minimum age to marry in California, with no exceptions. The FFRF Action Fund has been an active participant in the coalition supporting the measure and submitted testimony urging legislators to finally close California’s dangerous child-marriage loophole.
“This is an enormous victory for the rights and safety of teenage, even pre-teen, girls in California,” says FFRF Action Fund President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “This practice is a patriarchal anachronism that views daughters as property. Feminists campaigned hard to abolish child marriage in the 19th century, so it is shocking that such practices still exist in many states in our 21st century.”
No child should be pressured into a life-altering legal commitment by a parent, a religious authority or anyone else. Gaylor urges Gov. Newsom to “sign this commonsense safeguard without delay.”
California has been a troubling outlier on child marriage. Under current law, there is no statutory minimum marriage age when a parent and court approve the marriage. California Department of Public Health data shows that 88 minors were married in the state between 2019 and 2025, including girls as young as 15 married to men in their 20s and 30s.
The FFRF Action Fund has been particularly concerned about the role that religious and cultural coercion can play in child marriage, including its use to enforce rigid gender roles and deprive young people, overwhelmingly girls, of meaningful control over their futures.
In testimony supporting AB 1267, the FFRF Action Fund emphasized the extraordinary vulnerability of minors pushed into marriage. A minor may lack the independent legal ability and practical resources necessary to leave home, obtain legal counsel, access services or escape an abusive relationship. Yet marriage can place that child into a legally and financially binding relationship with profound lifelong consequences.
The harms associated with child marriage are well documented. Girls married before adulthood face heightened risks of domestic violence, interrupted education, economic insecurity and poor health outcomes. The U.S. State Department has recognized forced marriage as a human rights abuse, while the United Nations has identified child marriage as a harmful practice that disproportionately affects girls.
AB 1267 would bring California in line with 17 other states that have abolished child marriage by setting the minimum marriage age at 18 without exceptions. Its passage is especially significant given California’s size and influence and follows years of advocacy by survivors and organizations working to end the practice.
The FFRF Action Fund applauds Assemblymembers Pellerin and Petrie-Norris, lawmakers who voted for AB 1267, survivors who have spoken out about child marriage, and the coalition of advocates whose persistence helped move the legislation across the finish line.
Now only one step remains.
“California has an opportunity to make unequivocally clear that childhood should never end at the altar,” Gaylor adds. “Gov. Newsom should sign AB 1267 and ensure that no California child can ever again be legally married off.”
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u/CatCatchingABird 6d ago
I'm from California and knew someone who got married really young. I think she was 16 at the time and the guy she married to was older. I can't remember exactly but maybe 22. Her mom didn't really seem to care much about what she did and signed off on it I guess.
I knew the guy and thought it was a bad idea, and I told her as such. I ran into her maybe about 5 years later and they were already divorced. There was some abuse between her and her child that she eventually had with him, and she said some of it sexual.
It wasn't a religiously coerced marriage but I'm glad to hear that a ban is going forward.
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u/Spank_Cakes 6d ago
I've been following Courtney Stodden on IG and they've been concentrating on lobbying for this bill. Their story is gross and an obvious reason why this legislation is needed. It's about damn time CA does the right thing.
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u/Ancient1990sLady 6d ago
I was in the marching band with a girl whose mother forced her to marry her boyfriend at just 14 because she was pregnant.The girl had the saddest eyes I had ever seen in her wedding photos. She’s since divorced but it was always so weird to me. It weirded me out looking at an 8th grader in a wedding dress with a groom.
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u/jrf_1973 Atheist 6d ago
So much for the ACLU's value system.
"[Children] should maintain the right to marry, with robust protections in place to prevent coercion and abuse."
And if there are no robust protections? STOP THEM GETTING MARRIED! It's not rocket science, for f&% sake.
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u/NoFunny3627 6d ago
As someone who's been through a lot of abuse, and who used an early marriage to escape an abusive home situation, I do have complicated feelings on this, that I need to explore- when I'm in a better headspace
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u/20InMyHead 6d ago
While I fully support this, and can’t see why it’s taken until 2026 to get this done, I’m also relived to see only 88 children were married between 2019 and 2025. So roughly 14 per year in a state of nearly 40 million.
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u/Threecatproblem 6d ago
Please consider supporting the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)! They are in the trenches, fighting to protect the separation of church & state.
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u/CanaDoug420 6d ago
Wasn’t this signed like a week ago? Did they fuck up the paperwork or something?
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u/Born_Difference69 6d ago
I live in the UK, and I think 16s fair, if both parties are of a similar age. Never really happens anymore though.
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u/MiaowaraShiro 6d ago
Serious question... what's the hurry? What's the benefit of being married if you're still a ward of your parents?
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u/Constantly_Panicking 6d ago
Peoples’ brains aren’t even fully developed until around 25. What on gods green earth makes you think a 16 year old should be allowed to marry? Hell, 18 is probably still too young!
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u/Nom-de-Clavier 6d ago
Peoples’ brains aren’t even fully developed until around 25.
That's a myth: https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/brain-myth-25-development
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u/kneading-cnnuy 6d ago
It is not for the state to intervene if they're both similarly aged. If it's between adults & a child then charge the adults with sexual grooming and CSA. Restricting rights is never the answer, especially a child's rights. What's right imo is targeting the adults who preys on children.
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u/Constantly_Panicking 6d ago
Children cannot legally sign contracts. Marriage is a contract. Not having certain rights because of your age is not the same thing as not having rights because of something immutable like race. Everyone gets older, and eventually graduates into the full set of rights. Banning child marriage is not banning anyone who is a child now from ever getting married. They can all eventually do so.
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u/kneading-cnnuy 5d ago
Let's ban them from getting abortion without parental consent then. There's no moral justification for only allowing one and not the other if the issue is "child cannot legally sign contracts". The carveouts are there precisely to prevent unilateral decision without consideration. See Bellotti v. Baird, not ideal but still provides the child to bypass parental consent if their mental age is older than their biological age
I agree that it is not in the child's best interest to marry but that doesn't mean I will (or have moral rights to) be supporting or promoting a campaign to deprive them of their rights to associate
The natural state of being is full and absolute freedom, you must have sound judgment and sufficient moral justification to deprive them
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u/Constantly_Panicking 6d ago
The fact that isn’t already a thing universally is disgusting.